


Killing Ghosts

by SylvanWitch



Series: Proving the Exception [8]
Category: The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: After the Third Bond fic, M/M, Rape Recovery, Soul Bond, references to non-consensual sex
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-09-16
Updated: 2013-09-16
Packaged: 2017-12-26 17:58:35
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Rape/Non-Con
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,677
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/968621
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/SylvanWitch/pseuds/SylvanWitch
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>
  <i>It seemed impossible that there were still new things between them six months after the Third Bond had bound them body and soul, hearts and minds, but even now...Phil found himself surprised.</i>
</p>
            </blockquote>





	Killing Ghosts

**Author's Note:**

> Please note: The rape is in Clint's past and not graphically described. However, the emotional and psychological effects of rape are rather viscerally described. Please be aware that there may be triggers.
> 
> Also, the events in this story follow almost immediately those in "In Need."

It seemed impossible that there were still new things between them six months after the Third Bond had bound them body and soul, hearts and minds, but even now, even with the familiar tightness of Clint’s body sheathing him, contracting around his cock and tormenting sensation out of him, Phil found himself surprised.

 

At this point in their lovemaking, they were almost inseparable, minds woven together to form a complex pattern of a life neither of them had lived individually.  This was the tapestry of their union; in places, it blazed in amazing colors, a riot of kaleidoscopic promise.  

 

Of course, this idea was only a construct, for there were no actual means in any of the languages Phil spoke to express the feeling of—not belonging, no…of being another and oneself all at once.

 

Sometimes, he imagined them instead as a scattering of atoms infinitely beautiful, spread against an eternity of darkness, so much conscious, blazing dust.

 

But here, pressed as far into Clint as he could go, here as the biceps he pinned to the bed knotted underneath his hands, as Clint’s fingers dug desperately into Phil’s arms, holding on like he might spin away into the ether if he didn’t, Phil found himself in a place he’d never been before, a gaping black hole, a threadbare, moth-eaten patch of tapestry, its colors leeched and leeching all vibrancy from the threads that touched it.

 

Even as he considered the source of that ugliness, Clint tensed beneath him and cried out, his orgasm wrenched from him in a painful sound that Phil suddenly understood was a sob.

 

Phil froze, horrified as a wave of unwillingness washed over him:  Clint hadn’t wanted this, hadn’t wanted what Phil had done, had forced on him, working his hard cock into Clint’s shivering, unyielding body.

 

He had just enough self-possession to remember to ease away, to leave Clint carefully so as not to cause more harm, and then Phil was retching over the side of the bed, dry heaves bringing nothing up, eyes streaming, revulsion plunging its fist into his guts and yanking.

 

A hand on his shoulder brought him back to the room, which spun vertiginously as Phil understood the full horror of what he’d done, and absurdly, Clint was saying, “I’m sorry.  I’m sorry.  Phil, I’m so sorry…”

 

The abject despair in Clint’s voice made Phil cold, the sweat between his shoulder blades turning clammy, making him shiver.

 

He wiped a hand over the foulness of his mouth and found that for the first time in many years, he couldn’t look another man in the eyes.

 

Clint’s hand, shaking as hard as Phil was, raised his chin, forced Phil to look at his face.  There was white in Clint’s eyes, and his skin was pale as if the life had drained from him or he’d seen an awful ghost.  He’d tried on a weak smile that fooled neither of them as he said, “This wasn’t you, Phil.  You didn’t do that to me.  It wasn’t you.”

 

Phil wanted to believe, hope startling alive so suddenly in him that it knifed through his heart and made him cough.  For a slender second, he was sure that if he looked down, he’d find a blue-tinged blade lodged between his ribs.

 

It was only Clint’s hand there, though, resting over the scar, reading the measure of Phil’s heart as it beat frantically in his too-tight chest.

 

“It was a memory, Phil. I’m sorry.  I should’ve told you sooner, before, back at the parking ramp.”

 

As much as Phil wanted to be exonerated for raping his lover, it made him sick to think that this was his alibi, some brutal memory of a much younger Clint having his innocence thrust out of him by a violent, unloving monster.

 

Then he registered all of Clint’s words.

  
“The parking ramp?” 

 

Clint’s nod was ragged, as if his head were too heavy to hold up, full as it was of the awful memories of his violation.

 

“That street… I’d been on it before.  It was…there was an apartment over the electronics store—it used to be a bakery, for bread and rolls.  It was back when I was—.”  He stopped as though the next word defeated him.  He didn’t need to say it, though.  Phil had felt it, been inside of the memory.

 

Phil swallowed hard, willing down the bile that threatened to choke him.  He covered Clint’s hand with his own, pressing it against his chest, the scar, willing Clint to feel the love Phil had for him, to see the way Phil had always seen Clint:  Powerful and beautiful.  Indomitable. Stronger at the broken places.

 

“—when I was younger,” Clint finished, swallowing hard, staring not into Phil’s eyes but at their hands where they twined over Phil’s heart.  “I was freelance then, and there was a boss who’d used the bakery to launder money.  There were a couple of rooms over it for the guys, you know, if we needed to lay low or whatever.  The boss came in one night when I was sleeping there—I didn’t have a place of my own.  I thought he wanted me to do a job for him, but he didn’t.  He sat on the edge of the bed and put his hand on me.”

 

Clint paused, licked his lips.  He was shaking his head from side to side as if denying the vision they were both seeing now, of the big man pressing Clint into the mattress, intent clear in his eyes.

 

“He smelled of yeast and butter.”  Every word came out strangled, higher, and Phil knew he was hearing a younger Clint, a terrified young man barely out of his teens to whom the world had never given anything without an awful price attached.

 

“I knew what he wanted.”  This Clint said defiantly, as if he half-hoped, half-feared that Phil would accept it as blame.  

 

“Doesn’t make what he did your fault,” Phil answered immediately, tightening his grip on Clint’s hand.

 

Another automatic nod.

 

“Clint,” Phil said, his own voice ragged with emotions he was keeping behind his teeth only with enormous effort. “It was never your fault.”

 

“I didn’t say no,” Clint confessed in a broken whisper.

 

“How could you?  He’d have hurt you worse or killed you if you’d refused.”

 

The nodding looked painful now, like at any moment Clint’s neck would break.  Phil laid his free hand against Clint’s nape and pulled him in until his forehead rested in the hollow of Phil’s collarbone and his panting breath gusted damp and warm across their joined hands.

 

Into the delicate shell of Clint’s ear, Phil breathed, “I love you.”

 

Clint’s nodding gave out in favor of wracking shudders that tore awful sounds from his throat.

 

Phil could only hold on as the tempest broke over them both, waves of regret and pain, clouds filthy with shame unleashing a torrent of self-loathing, fear and weakness and uselessness, until at last, after what seemed like hours, only a thin puddle of exhaustion stretched around them on the island refuge their bed had become.

 

Phil pulled them down against the sheets, covered them in blankets and wrapped Clint in his arms, and waited until the shivers subsided into gentle rocking that brought them down into obliterating sleep.

 

Morning crept into the room in thin winter sunlight that robbed the throw rug of color but gave Phil enough light to see Clint’s eyes were open.  In the night, they’d worked onto their sides, Phil spooned up behind Clint, his broad back a bulwark against whatever might come through their door.

 

“I should’ve told you,” Clint began, and Phil waited, knowing this was the last of the poison seeping thin and yellow from the old, old wound.  “But I was afraid you’d think I was weak or something.”

 

“You’re not weak,” Phil said, spreading his fingers as widely as he could so that he could communicate through touch all the things he couldn’t put to words.  He thought of Clint in the scything wind on that rooftop, sitting immobile for six hours with nothing but the haunting memories to keep him company.  Anyone else would have broken long before Clint had allowed that one word—Phil’s name—past his lips.  

 

“You’re one of the strongest people I know, Clint.”

 

Phil felt rather than heard the huff of bitter laughter Clint buried in the pillow against his mouth, and he tightened his arm where it was draped across Clint’s chest and drew Clint back against him.  

 

“Have I ever lied to you?” Phil asked, his voice a little harder now, more serious.

 

“No,” Clint answered immediately.

 

“Then I’m not lying now,” Phil affirmed.

 

“But I fucked up yesterday.”

 

“Yes,” Phil answered drily. “And that never happens to the rest of us.”

 

Another snort of bitter laughter.  Phil was coming to dislike that sound.

 

“Cartagena,” he said without hesitation.  Clint stiffened in his arms.

 

“That wasn’t your fa—,” he started, but Phil shut him down.

 

“My op.  My call.  My responsibility.  That’s the difference between owning my mistakes and letting them own me.”

 

Clint’s muscles didn’t relax, but he nodded, the brush of his hair against Phil’s chin giving him a pleasant shiver.

 

“Point taken.”

 

“There are always going to be ghosts,” Phil said then.  His had green eyes and an arrogant smirk and a disconcerting habit of stabbing him through the chest.  “But I think if we share them, they go thin and lose their power.”

 

At last, Clint relaxed once more against Phil.  Long moments passed, a comfortable and comforting silence settling in.

 

Then Clint deliberately rubbed his ass against Phil’s groin and at the same time directed Phil’s hand downward toward his stirring cock.

 

“Let’s put this fucker to bed, then,” Clint suggested, and as Phil closed his hand around Clint and pulled a breathy moan out of him, Phil felt his heart kick up, wild and alive beneath the mounded silver scar, happy to kill two ghosts with one stroke, as it were.


End file.
